Report: "'Women's Action' in the History of Japanese Films"

Megumi SHINODA
ICU Undergraduate Student

【The article below is the same as the article that appears in the fourteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.】

　On May 20, 2011, Ms. Hana Washitani who specializes in lm studies and Japanese lm history gave a lecture titled "'Women's Action' in the History of Japanese Films." The event was co-hosted by CGS and "Approaches to Gender Studies," a foundation course in the pGSS major. Throughout the lecture, Ms. Washitani presented the dual nature of actresses in the masculine genre of action lms: As well as being xed in the patriarchal system, they are depicted as erotic gures with emphasis on their physical femininity.
　First of all, Ms. Washitani pointed out that early narrative cinema was based on plots in which a hero rescues a heroine. The structure of a dynamic hero who exerts righteous violence on a villain/villains, and a static heroine who awaits rescue by the hero is still a powerful narrative framework today. The heroine in such films is the object of desire, and this has enabled masculine representations of the hero. On the other hand, the early Showa period saw the emergence of "vamps," female characters who seduce men and also defeat them. The chanbara (sword-fighting) films featuring the actress Hibari Misora in male clothing gained popularity in the late Showa period. However, while these active and aggressive vamps are portrayed as wicked women sacricing men, they are also presented as objects of the masculine gaze and presented as erotic spectacles. Even Misora needed to be transformed: it was only by dressing as a man that her action scenes could be viewed as justiable battles.
　Ms. Washitani also pointed out that the "castration" of ghting women in cinematic examples from the 1970's onwards have functioned to dispel any anticipated fear of a threat to the patriarchal system. Even in Hayao Miyazaki's animated films, women appear to play an active role as protagonists, but the ghting women lose a part of their bodily functions in scenes of castration, as seen in the example of the character Lady Eboshi who lost her arms in Princess Mononoke. I think that this castration of ghting women is also found in society. For example, talking about working women presenting their ideas "from a female perspective" and praising the "beauty" of such women can also be forms of castration illustrating that working women do not threaten the central position of men in the labor market. The lecture made me see how films and other cultural media influence the framework of people's awareness, and how that awareness is in turn reected in such representations.
　At the end of the lecture, Ms. Washitani observed that the conventionally masculine domain of action in lm could be mimicked by women as a form of "make-believe play." Although women's action has been underestimated as a mere copy of the original (men's action), its very nature as mimicry serves to recongure the elements of conventional masculine representations and paves the way for the creation of new expressions. However, I was left with some doubts about this positive view of the possibilities of make-believe play or mimicry in women's action lms as a means of resistance. As Ms. Washitani herself repeatedly pointed out in the lecture, the patriarchal structure will prevail as long as women's action is regarded as a mere copy that does not threaten men's action as the original form. Yet, placing women's action at the center as the legitimate form still retains the same original frame work of original vs. copy. Rather, should we not be aiming for a framework that challenges these male/female and original/copy dichotomies?